


Some kind of resolution

by YourFadedGlory (HisNameWasAce)



Series: Judgement [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Graphic description of malnutrition, Hurt Steve Rogers, M/M, Past Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 03:37:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7558630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HisNameWasAce/pseuds/YourFadedGlory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They needed somewhere secluded but equipped to deal with a super soldier, someone neutral who’d be willing to treat a fugitive of the world, or better yet someone who was a fugitive of the world.</p>
<p>“I might have an idea,” Clint rooted through his pockets and plucked out the homemade burner phone he kept around to call Laura and the kids. “How true were those rumors about you and Banner?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some kind of resolution

**Author's Note:**

> _“In my experience everyone is a killer. Or a victim. Some people just need a little coaxing to choose a side.”  
>  ― Paula Stokes, Vicarious_

Clint clutched Steve’s body against his own, bruises rising in his friend’s gray skin from the grip it took to support him. Without his suit or shield, without muscle or fat, Steve weighed nothing. He was a phantom weight, liable to blow away on the next gust of wind if not held down. Still, Clint felt heavy as he made his way through the falling snow and toward quinjet. In his arms, Steve had yet to shiver from the cold, his eyes still beneath their closed lids.  It felt for all the world like he was carrying a corpse, one that still breathed and still bruised, but would never again live as it had.

 

In the jet, Clint laid Steve as gently as he could manage on a row of seats, draping in clean sheets and shock blankets to try and afford him some sort of comfort. The others trailed in behind him, Phil making a beeline for the cockpit and steadfastly refusing to look too closely at his fallen idol. Andrew fell weak kneed into the first open seat, his face about as ashen as Steve’s. Tasha stood vigilant above them all, her shoulders squared tight and back, radiating a silent fury that had the hairs on Clint’s arms standing at attention. “Where are we going to take him?” She asked.

 

Clint considered the question with a slight frown. SHIELD and the Avengers Compound were no longer viable options, any hospital in a nation recognized by the U.N. was too high a risk, but going outside U.N. nations came with its own set of risks as well. They needed somewhere secluded but equipped to deal with a super soldier, someone neutral who’d be willing to treat a fugitive of the world, or better yet someone who was a fugitive of the world.

 

“I might have an idea,” Clint rooted through his pockets and plucked out the homemade burner phone he kept around to call Laura and the kids. “How true were those rumors about you and Banner?”

 

Tasha scowled and cuffed him over the head. She grumbled under her breath in Russian, but snatched the phone out of Clint’s hand without more than a half second pause to consider the idea. “It’s me, I need your help, or rather Steve does…”

 

* * *

 

 

“Why is it that Stark is the only genius that ever settled somewhere with a decent climate?” Clint muttered as he tromped out into another field of snow toward Bruce’s mountain side lab, nestled away in the barren depths of Greenland. “Where did he even find the money to build this place?”

 

“I pulled a few strings to find him a worthy investor,” Tasha said, striding a few paces ahead to meet the salt and peppered scientist when he came shuffling out the door.

 

Bruce greeted her warmly, or about as warmly as someone like Bruce could manage. Everyone else he looked at like cats looked at rocking chairs, his hair a bit grayer and eyes a bit emptier, the Hulk’s last public rampage in Africa apparently still a persistent weight on his shoulders. “Director Coulson, Clint…” He nodded at each of them in turn, ignoring Andrew all together in favor of staring at the bundle of sheets and shock blankets cradled in Clint’s arms. “You should probably come inside.”

 

Clint could give credit where credit was due, Bruce took Steve’s skeletal appearance in stride, barely missing a beat when he got his first good look at the emaciated man. He hummed around Steve’s hospital bed like a bee, taking blood and scans, hooking in IV’s and a catheter, slipping him into a pair of scrubs and covering him in a warmed blanket. It was an efficient process, mechanical almost in the way Bruce went about it, eyes fixed forward and hands unwavering.

 

The moment he left the room though, came around the other side of the glass, Clint could see the rage in his eyes, the glimmer of green beneath the brown.

 

“Well, what’s the diagnosis doc?” Clint asked, aiming for hopeful and falling impossibly flat.

 

“The last time I saw him, he could have lifted a truck over his head. The shape he’s in now, he couldn’t lift a hand to feed himself.” Bruce all but growled, crossing his arms over his chest, knuckles white from balled fists. “A hundred and thirty pounds under ideal weight, severely dehydrated, his legs have been broken so many times it’s taken an inch and a half off of his height, he’ll never walk without a limp, he’s suffering from radiation poisoning, and that’s not even accounting for the psychological trauma done by years of captivity and torture.”

 

Clint gawked openly at the irate scientist, having never heard so much out of Bruce’s mouth in one go.

 

“What are we looking at recovery wise?” Tasha asked, the only one out of them who seemed clear headed enough to think straight.  

 

Bruce shrugged, looking through the glass at Steve’s prone form. “Something’s wrong with the serum, without it we’re looking at months just to put the weight back on, let alone any sort of physical or psychological therapy.”

 

“Well, can’t we just get more serum?” Clint asked, glancing around the others.

 

Phil shook his head, “Even SHIELD doesn’t know the exact formula.”

 

“No one does. The last person to even have possession of a similar concoction that wasn’t Hydra was…” Bruce trailed off, shaking his head vehemently. “No, absolutely not.”

 

“Who was it?” Clint demanded, quickly growing to hate the web of secrets and lies that everything seemed to be tangle in these days. Tasha’s eyes narrowed to slits before she spoke and for a moment Clint thought that the glint in her eyes was far more dangerous than the glimmer of green in Bruce’s.

 

“Howard Stark.”

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who shows up in the next update?


End file.
